Standing on the sidewalk, looking up a steep slope towards the home of Landscape Architect Keith Geller, you know you’re about to enter a special landscape. Over the past 30 years, Geller has transformed a bare, grassy slope into an forested urban haven. His yard has been featured in magazines, books and newspapers stories and [...]
This is an excerpt from my latest post at the Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog. Click the link below to visit the full post. Every city has parks, however not all parks are created equal. Many are used primarily for recreation, others for dogs, but some are devoted to nature. Seattle is lucky to [...]
Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) may be considered a painful weed by most, but it is a complicated plant with many hidden virtues ranging from a valuable wildlife plant to making beer. While most people are well aware of the evils of Stinging Nettle, not many are familiar with the good. The complexities of the Stinging Nettle [...]
One of the first plants I placed in my new yard this past fall was the Indian Plum. The reason it received this honor was because it is the earliest plants to bloom in the spring. Walk through parks or natural areas in the Pacific Northwest as early as February and you’ll see white flowers [...]
The Virtuous Weed is a new feature on The Metropolitan Field Guide inspired by The Weeds in My Street on the Cryptoforestry blog. The definition of weed is a highly complicated and controversial affair as Richard Mabey discusses in his fascinating book, Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants. Are they simply plants in the [...]
This is an excerpt from my latest post at the Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog. Click the link below to visit the full post. Here in Seattle we had a very long and very dry summer. It seemed that fall would never arrive as we enjoyed 70 degree days into October. However, the seasons [...]
This is an excerpt from my latest post at the Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog. Click the link below to visit the full post. I confess, I’ve never been very good with plants. This despite having a fair grasp on their workings; having taken horticulture and plant classes while getting my Landscape Architecture degree. [...]
Last year when I wrote about the Northwest Flower and Garden Show I talked a lot about how the gardens didn’t feature wildlife habitat, but could have easily done so and I featured specific examples. I also expressed hope that a nature organization would partner on a display garden. This year, my hope was realized [...]
Common Name: American Wigeon Scientific Name: Anas americana Family: Anatidae The American Wigeon is a dabbling duck, which are ducks that tip their front ends into the water to forage while their back ends stick up in the air. They maintain a large geographic range, breeding as far north as the Bering Sea and wintering from Canada [...]
Plants of the Pacific Northest Coast: Washington, Oregon, British Columbia & Alaska features nearly 800 plants common to the coast of the Pacific Northwest and is one of my most often referenced plant books. Boasting over 1,000 each photos and drawings, plants are described in good detail including information about plant structure such as leaf shape [...]
You would never know that Common Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) is not a native plant of North America considering how abundant it is in certain regions like the Pacific Northwest. This flower was introduced from Europe and is found in gardens, and has naturalized to spread to roadsides, fields, forest edges and other disturbed sites around the [...]
Today’s Friday Film is a lecture by Dr. Kristina Hill, Associate Professor and Director of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia presented by the Harvard Museum of Natural History. I was familiar with her name as a co-editor of Ecology and Design with Bart Johnson, one of my professors at the University of Oregon so [...]